PDF.js viewer with Hypothesis

A web PDF viewer (PDF.js) with Hypothesis added.

This is a copy of Mozilla's PDF.js viewer with Hypothesis annotation tools added.

When to use this project

If you want to embed or link to a PDF on your site with annotation using Hypothesis enabled, the easiest way is using our proxy server: https://via.hypothes.is/<PDF URL>.

For example, to embed a PDF on your site using Hypothesis, you can add an HTML snippet such as the following to your page:

<iframe width="800" height="600" src="https://via.hypothes.is/https://publisher.com/article.pdf">
</iframe>

There are situations where the proxy server may not be suitable:

• If the PDF is not publicly accessible (for example, it is behind a paywall, requires a login or is on a corporate intranet)
• If you want to make customizations to the PDF viewer (for example, to add custom analytics scripts or change the configuration of the Hypothesis client)
• If you are running your own instance of the Hypothesis annotation server

If any of the above apply, this project may be useful.

To use it, add the files from this repository to your site and embed or link to viewer/web/viewer.html?file=<PDF URL>.

Usage

Clone this repository, then run:

# Navigate to the project's root directory
cd pdf.js-hypothes.is

# If using Python 2, start a simple HTTP server...
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
# ...or if using Python 3
python -m http.server 8000

# Then run the command below or navigate to the URL in your browser
open http://localhost:8000/viewer/web/viewer.html

The default PDF should render and the Hypothesis annotation tools will appear when you select text.

Viewing Your Own PDFs

The viewer/web/viewer.html file supports a file query parameter which specifies the URL of a PDF to load. This PDF must either be hosted on the same origin or be served with appropriate headers that allow it to be loaded from the viewer's origin.

For example:

http://localhost:8000/viewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2Fyourpdf.pdf

%2F is the URL escaped form of /--so this assumes you have a yourpdf.pdf file hosted at http://localhost:8000/

License

The PDF.js files in viewer/ are licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

The Hypothesis annotation tools are loaded from the public service at https://hypothes.is, so there's no additional licensing needed. See the hypothesis/h project if you'd like to host your own.